Homosexuality, or rather buggery, has been a crime in Great Britain since the Buggery Act of 1533.
This legislation aimed to restrict any sexual activity not directly linked to procreation, irrespective of the genders involved.
Execution outside Newgate Prison, early 19th century.
Regardless, these two individuals are remembered as the last to be executed for sodomy in England.
Bonill invited Pratt and Smith back to his boarding house owned by Jane and George Berkshire.
Their boarder, it seemed, was allowing men to use his room for nefarious, sodomitical purposes.
George saw the men laughing together and in conversation.
She returned to tell her husband that she had witnessed sexual acts.
He became enraged, went upstairs and also looked through the keyhole.
But George called the police anyway.
Bonill, who was absent at that time, returned a few minutes later with a jug of ale.
The cops also arrived and all three men were arrested.
Aside from the sole testimony of the Berkshires there was no other material evidence to support the charge.
Judge Baron Gurney, who presided at their trial, sentenced them to death by hanging.
Bonill, convicted of conspiring to allow buggery to be committed, was deported to Australia for 14 years.
He died in Tasmania in 1841.
Not everyone agreed with the verdict or the sentence.
They well knew that for them there was no hope in this world, Dickens continued.
The crowd started hissing, possibly in disagreement with the execution.
Smith and Pratt were the last two men executed in England for buggery.
The Buggery Act was repealed by the Offences against the Person Act 1828.
Homosexuality was finally decriminalized in Great Britain by the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967.
21st September 1835# The Last Men Executed for Sodomy in England, 1835,Rictor Norton
